IndieWorks: Insider Series w/ Shahir Daud

Part of our effort for IndieWorks is to feature & support indie filmmakers outside of our monthly screenings. We bring our winning filmmakers to your screen for a chat with IndieWorks co-host Lauren A. Kennedy in our series titled "IndieWorks: Insider Series".

Shahir Daud screened his fantastic film "La Loteria" in February 2014 and not only won that month's Silver Whiskers Award, but also took home the Audience Choice Award at our 1st Best of Fest last year. We invited him over to chat with Lauren about the romantic true story that inspired the film and the new projects he's been working on since last year's screening.

Shahir Daud:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/shahirdaud
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user3700443

IndieWorks: Best of Fest Recap

Thank you.

To all of the amazing people involved in this community who submit their work, attend our monthly series, follow our content, and spread the word of anything IndieWorks... we truly thank you. It's been a great year of fantastic films and talented filmmakers.

Last year, Christina decided she wanted to create a monthly film series for local independent filmmakers to showcase their work for an audience and connect with their (our) peers in a friendly and supportive environment. Sure enough, she made it happen pretty quickly. It's been another passion project from our team, and we hope it has stayed true to the ideals of helping independent filmmakers find an audience and build a network & community.

Last Thursday, we celebrated our Best of Fest by screening 10 winning films from our first year of IndieWorks. Naturally, it was hosted at PEOPLE's Lounge in the Lower East Side, whom we truly have to extend a great deal of gratitude. They have been so very helpful over this past year, giving us this venue each month to host the series and sponsoring prizes for Best of Fest.

The event brought an audience of nearly 90 guests to commemorate our first year; new faces and plenty of familiar. All audience members got 250 Sparks from SeedandSpark.com and we had 2 free raffle winners (both of them filmmakers who have previously screened their films at IndieWorks). The first of whom was October Audience Choice winner, Hannah Leshaw ("Fictional Me, Fictional You"), who came out to support the other filmmakers of the night, and April Silver Whiskers winner, Shahir Daud ("La Loteria"), who's film was screening that evening. They both received a copy of Bright Ideas (Seed&Spark's exclusive independent film magazine) and a Seed&Spark t-shirt.

The Awards Go To...

Audience Choice Award

Shahir Daud - "La Loteria"

Sponsor Prizes:

PEOPLE's: an evening of bottle service.

Seed&Spark: a copy of Bright Ideas & $200 toward a crowdfunding campaign if funded on Seed&Spark.

Indiewood_Hollywouldn't: film review & sharing of any future film or crowdfunding news via social media this year.

Golden Whiskers Award

Dani Tenenbaum - "Guides"

Sponsor Prizes:

PEOPLE's: 1.5 TB hard drive.

Seed&Spark: a copy of Bright Ideas; $200 toward a crowdfunding campaign if funded on Seed&Spark; "Guides" will be streamed in the Cinema on Seed&Spark's site.

Indiewood_Hollywoodn't: film review; interview on website; sharing of any future film or crowdfunding news via social media this year.

We had an amazing time with everyone who joined us Thursday evening, and every other evening in which we celebrated filmmaking during IndieWorks this year. As we take next month as an opportunity to go out and make things, we hope you will too. Our second year of IndieWorks is coming back better than ever in June -- so keep in touch & stay up to date through our social media accounts.

And be sure to submit your films on our IndieWork page. 

Discover Shorts. Find an Audience. Build the Community.

IndieWorks: February Recap

Hey, filmmaking friends! Were you at last Wednesday's IndieWorks? Pretty good lineup if you ask us. We screened seven films this month, and each seemed to be just as good as the next.  

It was also our first event with the films playing on two screens! Our friends and indie film supporters at the PEOPLE's Lounge Installed a new 42 inch flatscreen in the back for our audience to have two options for where they'd like to sit and watch the films. Thanks to them, our other wonderful supporters and talented filmmakers like yourself, each event just gets better and better.

Click through to see photos from the night.

The awards go to...

At the end of the evening, we announced our winning filmmakers for both Audience Choice Award & Silver Whiskers Award. The Audience Choice Award is voted upon by all those in attendance, and the Silver Whiskers is judged by the CongestedCat Team based on a system rating 8 categories of Story, Dialogue/Writing, Direction, Acting, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, and Production Value. It goes on to screen at our Annual Best of Fest event in April.

For the February 2014 lineup, our winning filmmakers were:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Das Fest der Liebe" Directed by Anna Kirst.
    Silver Whiskers Award:  "La Loteria" Co-Written & Directed by Shahir Daud.

Our next IndieWorks event will take place on March 19th at our usual venue, the PEOPLE's Lounge in the Lower East Side (163 Allen St), New York City. Speaking of which...

 Two Months Until Our 1st Annual 'Best of IndieWorks'

It's been almost a year since we first started hosting IndieWorks, a new monthly film series intended to help indie filmmakers have an audience to showcase their work, network with other artists in the field, and offer their own insights and experiences to filmmakers. We have one more series before we bring back all the winners of our Silver Whiskers Awards for the end of year event. On April 16th, we'll be hosting the event on both floors of the PEOPLE's lounge to showcase all 10 winning filmmakers and their films. 

Because we are completely non-profit and aim to maintain an environment where we mingle and network with our peers, not profit off them, we're currently looking for sponsors to donate prizes to the returning filmmakers or our audience. We've already got Seed&Spark, another indie film supporting site all about #FairTradeFilmmaking, on board as one sponsor. We're so excited to be partnering with them for IndieWorks, and look forward to finding other likeminded sponsors. For anyone interested in helping with that search, shoot us an email at social@congestedcat.com -- let's hand out as many goodies as we can!

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